INSOMNIMANIA
by 8 Jhibriel 8
Summary: Reads like Alice in Wonderland in virtual-reality hell. -AU-
1. 00000

**DISCLAIMER:** I own nothing of it.

**AN: **Extreme AU. Don't like? Don't read.

::::::::::

**SUMMARY:**

It's the hottest place to be for sleepless denizens of the computer nets.

Here in cyberspace they can live out their wildest fantasies:

flirt or argue with the regulars in Road House's Bar,

play high-stakes poker in Casino del Camino,

engage in safe, anonymous sex in the Pleasure Dome,

watch or commit murders in the Snuff Room.

But suddenly high-tech fantasy explodes into a real-life nightmare

as Insomnimania subscribers begin dying -

and their murders start showing up in lurid detail on Snuff Room animations.

**...**

Insomnimania subscriber Castiel Novac stumbles onto a crime scene he recognizes from the Snuff Room, and after a second chilling murder, he let the cops on his suspicion that a serial killer is loose within the net. But Detective Dean Winchester has his own prime suspect: Castiel. Now Castiel must prove his innocence before the actual killer strikes again - and to do so he must haunt the bizarre corridors of Insomnimania, where fantasies emerge after dark... and death becomes all too real.

**:::::::::**

**INSOMNIMANIA**

**00000**

**ProLoGuE**

**::::::::::**

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19: 1:35 A.M

THE NIGHT IS CARPETED, QUIET. City noises are intercepted by walls and rooms and murmurs of sleeping guests. the man with slick-brown hair hears only a discreet whisper of cables gliding invisibly behind the elevator doors. He admires the efficiency of the world's machinery - obedient, respectful of his wishes. Machines understand the meaning of acquiescence and complience.

He sees his own reflection in the mirrored wall at the end of the short hallway - a lean, elegant, Armani-clad gentleman with yacht-weathered skin standing, tired but dignified, in ornate hallway. He adores mirrors, but this time he doesn't dwell on his image. He turns away and studies instead a design that embellishes the wall between the two elevators, an intricate raised pattern of garlands circling a sun.

Tired as he is, he is pleased with the moment, with the rich carpet and the ornate wall, with his sexual satiation and with his timely compliance with his own private and unspoken law: _Never spend the night._

Now he looks forward to a few hours of sleep.

_But can I sleep?_

He thinks of the very young woman he just left behind in the room down the hall.

_How old was she?_

He hadn't asked her, and if he had, he would not have expected the truth. _ People can be trusted to lie. A fact of life you can bank on. _Besides, it was best not to know now if she was underage - best not to dwell on any danger. It was all over. All in the past.

Nevertheless, he recollect her this blond her, her smooth white body - a whiteness just on the edge of being chalky, anemic, almost desagreeable. He had refrained from bruissing that body as he might otherwise have done, and the sex had admittedly been a little tame for his exacting taste. Nevertheless, the fail body had been too eager, too unreserved, too _facile_ to belong to someone without a fair amount of experience.

_There are no virgins in the world._ He feels his lips shape themselves into a comfortably familiar smirk. _People aren't even _born _with virginity anymore._

The brown-haired man quickly grows tired of these musings. Now the whispering behind the doors has ceased. The elevator must have stopped at another floor. His smugness fades. His satisfaction dissipates a little. He has no time for this waiting. Nothing he does is free - not even in the seeming privacy of his own brain tissue. His most intimate thoughts cost money.

_Where is that damned thing?_

The brown-haired man hears a soft, rhythmic brushing sound behind him. What is that sound? Rubber soles scuffing seam? He does not turn to look. He never turns to look at anybody if he can help it. Other people never occupy his curiosity or his interest. It is he who expects to occupy theirs. Other heads must turn, not his.

Even so, he regrets having faced away from the mirror. A glance, just the slightest motion of the head, would show him the person's reflection. He silently curses this spasm of interest. His discipline has slipped a little.

The quiet brushing comes to a halt behind him. How far away? Two feet? One foot? Less? The man with the brown-hair intuitively knows that his companion is not merely waiting for the elevator. No. This person has _found him. _This person knows who he is. The brown-haired man does not much like this. He has taken pains to be alone.

Then a voice behind him whispers, withthe conspiratorial sweetness of an imaginary childhood playmate: "Hi, Jo-jo-boy. It's me Auggie."

The man starts slightly at the sound, smiling with surprise.

_Auggie._

Can it be possible? It is, indeed, as if a childhood playmate had come to life. So many games, so many merry impostures. The man begins to turn, eyebrows raised in pleased expectation.

He is about to ask, "How did you find me?"

He is about to say, "I hope you're not still angry."

He glimpses the figure's face - a white, red, and black face comprised of tiny squares. _A mosaic? Pixels? _The brown-haired man's eyes squint to bring the face into better focus.

The rest of the figure is dark. It's right arm is out stretched. At the end of the arm, at the very threshold of the brown-hired man's peripheral vision, floats a bright glint of steel. The steel flashes inward and downward. The glint blinds momentarily. The man feels an implosion at his throat - a sudden, violent pressure accompanied by a noisy thud that reaches his ears through the resonant cavities of his skull.

There is no pain.

The man's head is suspended, motionless, held up by something imbedded in his throat. The brightly colored face with gigantic eyes becomes abruptly clearer. For a moment, the browned-haired man is aware of the large, red, downturned mouth scowling at him. Then, with a furious jerk, the shining thing releases itself from his throat and he swings exuberantly, dizzily around.

he finds himself staggering, facing the wall again with its garlands, its sun. A red liquid spray shoots rhythmically out of his throat. A rumbling exhalation out of his lungs accompanies the spray. The man is briefly enamored by the orgiastic ferocity of the spurting. For forty-six years, his body has struggled to contain this awful force - and now it is free.

_How vigorous. How godly._

But now he grip his throat clumsily, his fingers unable to contain the jubilant, pulsating fountain. His thoughts begin to stammer.

_These hands - these hands are too weak. Whose hands? Some damned incompetent . . ._

The man is dizzy. He is still waiting for the pain, but it does not come. He is a dancing marionette whose strings have been cut. His body crumples to the carpeted floor in an unseemly heap. He tries to breathe but can't. He doesn't actually want to breathe - not under these demeaning circumstances. This entire struggle is a terrible imposition, and he despises it - just as he despises waiting in lines.

Why isn't a subordinate here to take care of this?

What does he pay people for?

The man feels his body jerk and trash. He briefly considers shouting, "Stop it! Let go of me!" But without air and the use of his voice box, the effort would be futile and humiliating. Besides, he quickly realizes that his body is thrashing on its own mindless power.

The man's eye flash back and forth too hastily to take in more than a blur. He fleetingly thinks he detects the dark shape of his companion, but he can't be sure. His vision continues to gyrate crazily, even after his nervous system ceases to register his bodily convulsions.

Then he is still.

There is no pain.

There has never been any pain, never any terror.

The man stares unblinkingly upward at the wall. A wild red pattern like an aggressive abstract-expressionist splatter now overlays the sun and scatters across the garland's white curves. Huge, glistening droplets hand in precarious suspension, but do not move. _Have the droplets frozen, or has time stopped?_

The question does not much concern the brown-haired man.

It is a mere point of curiosity. The entire scene has been rendered with breathtaking clarity - and clarity is its own justification. Death is much brighter, much more orderly than he had expected - and infinitely more accommodating.

The man is pleased

**::::::::::**

THURSDAY, JANUARY 20: 12:03 A.M

On a computer monitor, facing the viewer:

An image comprised entirely of tiny, square computer pixels. It is a beige door against a white wall. The door is stamped with a bright red number - 636. Near the top of the screen, numerous pairs of disembodied eyes appear, blinking and staring. Letters are typed next to each set of eyes, giving them a frail semblance of identity:

"sudopod, starlitestarbrite, goldnrod, safir, tilly-the-hun, tomsantpolly, prayreedog, 1-fy . . ."

Music, heard over tiny, sputtering speakers:

Slow, gentle, lilting orchestral music, beginning with a discord in the low string, but immediately turning cheerful in the violins. The beginning of a Rossini overture, perhaps, but which one? It doesn't much matter. They all start off quiet and end up loud.

The door opens jerkily away from the viewer, revealing a black vacancy from which emerges a cartoonish, brown-haired man in three-piece suit. He turns toward the darkness and blows a noisy "smack" of a goodbye kiss toward his unseen lover. He closes the door behind him.

Zoom in on the brown-haired man's face. A silly, self-satisfied smile forms on his lips. Violinists slap their bows against the wood of their instruments in percussive applause.

Zoom out, taking the man's whole figure again. Track backward in front of the man as he starts to dance away, the hotel hallway with its parallel rows of doors retreating into the distance. But the perspective is a little off. The lines do not converge correctly as the viewer lumbers backward, keeping the man in view.

Keep tracking in front of him down the hallway and around numerous corners through an increasingly preposterous maze, to a corridor is a wall mirror. The man stop at the sight of his full-length reflection. The violin bows clatter against wood again, sounding slightly bemused, intermixing this time with halting queries from the other stringed instruments.

The perspective is momentarily unglued as the view moves behind the gray-haired man. He pushes the elevator button and glances briefly at a design on the wall between the elevators - an intricate sketch of garlands surrounding a sun.

A brief silence, then clarinets and oboes and English horns carry the music into a brisk up-tempo. An enormous hand - as if belonging to the viewer - reaches into the scene and taps the brown-haired man on the shoulder, accompanied by the now-familiar clacking of the violin bows.

There is momentary silence.

The man turns toward the viewer. His face fills the screen. He looks slightly puzzled, even as a smile shapes itself across his face. The violins sigh briefly with pleased surprise.

Then . . .

The screen is wiped clean by a swift, slashing movement accompanied by a comical electronic gurgling sound. The music reaches a madcap gallop. The hallway, the mirror, the sun and its garlands, and the elevator doors reappear, whirling around the brown-haired man.

A tight zoom in quickly on his face as his throat explodes in a pyrotechnical display of spouting red pixels. He clutches his throat. His eyes bulge and roll ludicrously. Shimmering globs of red cover the screen, briefly obliterating the view. then draining away to reveal him lying on the floor, flopping about in time to the music as it cartwheels into a reeling, festive finale.

View the man from above as he lies on his side, his scurrying feet twirling him in a crazy windmill motion. Then move down beside him as he flips on his back and flops like a fish, his pelvis lurching upward with the climax of the overture. Finally, zoom in on his face. The violins make one last clattering statement as the man's protruding eyes turn into little Xs.

With the closing chords, the screen shows a cluster of pixels scattered across a cybernetic white background. This bright crimson pattern, much like an old-fashioned kitchen sampler, overlays the sketch of the sun and is splashed across the garlands. A red trickle follows the edge of a curl.

**::::::::::**

**TBC**


	2. 00001

**DISCLAIMER: **I own nothing of it.

**::::::::::**

**INSOMNIMANIA**

**00001**

**TREMENDUM**

**::::::::::**

"BARGAIN-BASEMENT TRACHEOTOMY," Deput Coroner Frank Devereaux remarked, shining a penlight into the gaping throat wound and studying it through lowered bifocals. "Windpipe's sawed halfway through. Carotid arteries're severed. Sternomastoid muscles, too."

"Meaning?" Lieutenant Dean Winchester asked.

"Meaning I don't think he's gonna make it."

Dean chuckled grimly. No, this one definitely _wasn't _going to make it. Even from about five feet away, Dean could see that the wound - only an hour or so old - was showing sign of decay. The dead man's smell was nasty, too - the stench of raw, freshly cut meat and the mixed stink of feces and urine made the plush and well-lit hotel corridor smell incongruously like an outhouse.

Frank shined the penlight into the victim's eyes, and Dean could see that they had already flattened slightly - their fluid apparently had begun to drain. Dean made a note . . .

_"2:25 A.M The stiff is wilting a little."_

Dean always wrote down absolutely everything that entered his head while on the job, no matter how seemingly trivial, redundant, or absurd. Even though the local Hollywood detectives had surely taken notes, he would need his counted on for crucial details. Besides, notetaking was one of the few really natural things to do at a homicide scene. It kept one's hands busy.

"So how're you calling this one, Frank?" asked Dean partner, Sergeant Victor Hendrickson, who was gingerly stalking the area with a tape measure.

the gray-haired, pudgy deputy coroner sat back on his haunches.

"Reckon it'd be natural causes," Frank said. "It's got all the earmarks of a massive coronary or stroke. Or maybe just plain old age."

"Could he've choked on a chicken bone?" Victor asked. The black detective finished his measuring and turned to study the bloodstrain on the wall.

"Possibly, just possibly," Frank said. "He might have stuck his finger in a wall socket, too."

"What about suicide?" Dean asked.

"Get serious, Dean," Frank said, padding puppy dog - like around the body on his hands and knees. "Why would a guy that rich off himself?"

"Hell, we're talking about one of America's champion cutthroat buccaneers, here," Dean said. "Think of the guilt he must have been toting around. Here's what happened. About one-thirty-five this morning, Dick Roman's coporate sins caught up with him. He couldn't live with himself for one more minute. So he took a big butcher knife out of his suitcase, walked down the hotel hallway to the elevator, rode it two floors down, stepped out into the corridor here, and sliced himself open."

"Possible," Frank mused. "But what happened to the knife?"

"That is a problem," Dean grumbled.

Victor considered a moment and said, "That's obvious. Dick Roman handed it to some passerby during his dying moments. He said, 'Keep this. It'll be worth a lot of money one of these days.' "

Frank smiled, "Pretty compelling argument, guys. Still, there ought to be a suicide note."

"Looks to me like he was trying to write one on the wall over here," Victor said.

Dean went over and stared at the bloody blotch on the ornate white wall. It looked like paint slung from a moving brush.

"Read it to me," Frank requested.

"Looks pretty basic," Dean said. "But I've never gotten the hang of the language."

Victor glanced at him, but said nothing.

Dean flipped back to his previous notebook page and checked over his rough sketch and his jotted descriptions of the space: the two pairs of elevators facing jotted descriptions of the corridors; the mirrored wall at the corridor's end; the white, raised sun design between each of the elevators; the slashing bloodstain that lay across one of the suns. . .

Dean now drew a hasty little sketch of the blotch, indicating the large slash of red across the sun, smaller splatters on the rays, and a few isolated droplets extending across the raised leafy designs.

_Pseudostylishness and gore. Not your typical homicide scene._

At about one-forty-five, the body of Dick Roman, CEO of Chicago-based Apex Airlines, had been discovered by a waiter delivering a very early breakfast. Immediately after phoning the police, the waiter had dutifully taken it upon himself to call the L. A. _Times_, several alternative news papers, and a fair assortment and detectives arrived in time to find the body engulfed by a piranhalike flashbulbs and videocams. The cops had finally gotten the crowd of gawkers and reporters out of the way and directed down the nearby stairwells to other elevators. When it had become clear that the case was going to be a major media event, Dean and Victor were called in from Homicide Special Section.

They had fought their way through a crowd to get to the area the uniformed cops had roped off. By that time, the likelihood of the crime team finding anything useful had diminished to near zero. A half-hearted attempt had been made to look for fingerprints. The fingerprint powder now clung to a brass plate encasing a pair of elevator buttons and would probably remain there for a long time. That part had been a joke, of course, revealing only an indecipherable jumble. The same was true of the door leading to the escape stairs. Too many people routinely passed through a place like that for fibers or fingerprints to mean very much.

The uniforms were now standing at the edge of the scene, dutifully and conspicuously keeping their hand in their pockets in accord with Dean's ritual demand that they not touch anything.

The pudgy forensics doctor huffed and groaned a little as he brushed his hands off on his trouser legs and rose to his feet.

"Well, gentlemen," Frank said, "I sure hate to go out on a limb with some crazy-assed hypothesis, but my guess is it was murder. 'Course, that's good news for you guys. When folks stop doing each other in, you'll be looking for work."

"I could do with a change," Dean said. "I've been following the want ads for months."

"Yeah, and I'll bet there's a lotta work out there for an over-the-hill jerk who's done nothing his whole adult life 'cept go poking around other people's business."

"Hey, I'm not looking for a job for _you_, Franky."

"Very funny. You're too fast for me, Dean."

"Doesn't take a Ferrari."

"You could never go civilian. You love this stuff. Who could help but love it?"

"OK, let's call it murder for a moment, just to be goofy," Dean said. "Who was the prep?"

"Hey, you're the homicide expert," Frank said. "Don't ask me to do your job for you. I can tell you on one thing though. The motive wasn't robbery."

Frank stooped over and raised up the victim's left hand. He carefully removed a ring with a substantial diamond. Then he took a glittering gold Rolex from the wrist.

"Hell, those watches cost more than ten grand," Victor observed, as Frank took the items off the corpse, dropped them into a plastic bag, and handed them to Dean.

"That kind of cash'd sure help with Sammy's college tuition."

"Stop begging," Frank scolded.

"Let's have a look at his wallet."

"Just make sure you turn it in the way you found it."

Frank slid the wallet across the floor. Dean stopped to pick it up. He opened it, and a batch of glittering, multi-colored, metallic-embossed credit cards tumbled out, accordion-fashion. Dean thumbed through the wallet. It hardly contained anything except credit cards - just enough cash to give the hotel staff rudimentary tips.

"No pictures of his wife and kids?"

"And no portraits of Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer or the Dalai Lama, either," Victor added, looking over Dean's shoulder. "Plastic can sure take up a lot of room in your life."

Part of Frank's team was now unfolding the black body bag. The doctor hovered over them, admonishing them fussily about every move, treating the corpse like an artistic treasure. Dean was reminded of the career-loving gravedigger in _Hamlet. _Whenever, Dean worked a homicide scene with Frank, he more than half expected the man to whip out the extra skull for proud display. Frank never looked happier than when he was around a dead body.

As for himself, Dean could feel his own face frozen into a joyless expression. He didn't find his own wisecracks amusing, and he didn't really imagine anyone else did either.

_So why do I do it?_

The cliched explanation was that cops told jokes around murder scene to keep themselves sane. Dean sometimes suspected that that was a pretty flimsy rationlization.

_Maybe we tell jokes around murder scene to hide the fact that we've already lost it._

Dean watched as Frank's team manipulated the body, folding its arms and generally preparing it for the bag. The corpse was remarkably pliable. It almost seemed to shift consciously and give here and there to assist the team. Corpses at this stage were really quite cooperative - like well-behaved pets.

A word crossed Dean's mind . . .

_Tremendum._

That was a word Dean's father and one-time mentor, John Winchester had used. Dean wasn't sure whether it was an actual clinical term or just one of "Crazy" John's numerous coinages, but it had always struck him as a useful word. It described that uniquely self-conscious, uniquely human horror and awe and at the sight of a corpse - any corpse, even that of a total stranger. It was the ghastly mortal comprehension of the fact of death - and the awareness that death came to all.

Animals couldn't feel it.

Experienced cops couldn't either.

Dean certainly didn't feel any tremendum right at the moment. As far as he could tell, he didn't feel much of anything.

It was supposed to be that way, of course. You were supposed to get inured to it. Dean could remember a time when could still feel it, though - particularyly the first time. It was at the scene of a three-car accident on a New Year's Eve some fifteen years ago, back when Dean was still a rookie. Four dead teenagers were stretched on the pavement awaiting body bags. There had been another collision, fortunately minor, between two drivers who couldn't keep their eyes off the wreckage.

Dean had looked at those drivers and realized that they felt it, too. At that moment, he had understood how wrong-headed all those morbid jokes were about traffic bogging down at an accident. It wasn't grim smugness that slowed those cars. It was a kind of religious terror that seized even the most determined atheist. It was tremendum.

Frank's team delicately hoisted the body into the bag. Frank supervised. Dean thought about _Hamlet_ again as he contemplated his own utter lack of terror and awe . . .

_" . . . a beast, that wants discourse of reason, would have mourn'd longer."_

Dean had been through a time of terrible mourning.

It wasn't very long ago.

But had he mourned enough?

Had he _felt_ enough? Could a cop feel enough?

"At time like now," Frank mused elegiacally, "I'm reminded of the words of the poet: 'To die, to be really dead - that must be glorious!' "

"Nice," Dean said.

"Thank you," Frank replied.

"Who was the poet?" Victor asked.

"Dracula," Frank told him.

The body bag was closed with a noisy zip.

**::::::::::**

**TBC**


	3. 00010

**DISCLAIMER: **I own nothing of it.

**::::::::::**

**INSOMNIMANIA**

**00010**

**FLASHBACK**

**::::::::::**

CASTIEL NOVAK APPROACHED THE HOUSE through its elegant formal gardens. Morning sunlight washed across the scene, accentuating the stucco texture of the facade and giving it a yellowish tint. He briefly considered exchanging the bright sunlight for a dusky twilight or even a midnight full moon, just to observe the variation. But then he thought better of it.

_Trivailities. Better stick to business._

He moved directly across the terrace and up to the front door and peered into its leaded glass window, a contemporary design through which he could vaguely glimpse a cheerfully lit interior. He smiled slightly at his fleeting impulse to ring the doorbell.

_Who do you expect to find at home?_

The door swung open, and he moved into a stately entryway with an upstairs gallery looming above him along three walls. There was not a stick of furniture in the place or a painting or any of the walls. An eerie feeling of cavernous space swept over him.

_How large an unfurnished house always seems._

For a moment, he thought he heard a sound of an orchestra echoing through the empty space, slow and gentle but punctuated by an odd discord.

_Rossine again. Why can I not forget that tune?_

Castiel focused his attention on the room, shaking his head to make the music go away.

It didn't.

He thought about ascending the stairs on his left in order to gaze over the majestic room from the gallery. But it seemed best to poke around downstairs a bit first. He passed on into the empty living room with its monumental fireplace, then into the vast dining room.

He noticed that he was holding his breath.

Each time he turned a corner, he half expected to see someone there.

Someone dangerous.

_Utterly ridiculous._

Swinging around to view the empty room, he saw nothing. But he thought he heard a violin bows clacking, slapping percussively against the wood of the instruments.

_You're like a little kid who's stayed up past bedtime watching horror film on TV._

Castiel passed through another doorway into a bare kitchen. He turned back and forth, studying it whole length. It was long, narrow, and cramped in comparison to the rooms he had just passed through.

_I told them this space was too tight when we went over the floor plans. Who could do any major entertaining from a kitchen like this?_

After a few deft movement of Castiel's finger, the wall that connected to the dining room glided silently backward, carrying its counter space and cabinets along with it, broading the whole area by exactly four feet. Castiel studied the enhanced kitchen space with satisfaction.

_There. And that doesn't damage the next room - it's still big enough._

Just to try the idea out he caused a work island to pop into view in the middle of the kitchen floor. He effortlessly change the shape of the island and rotated it a little until it sat at a pleasing diagonal. There was plenty of room to walk around it on all sides.

Still, an adjustment like this demanded a formality. He moved his computer mouse to the desk accessory list, selected "Send Mail," and typed a message in the space that appeared.

TESSA:

PLEASE NOTE THE KITCHEN WALL ADJOINING THE DINING ROOM. I MOVED IT. IT'S NOT LOAD-BEARING, SO I DON'T SEE ANY PROBLEM. DO YOU? LET ME KNOW IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE.

-CN

Another mouse-click caused the message to vanish. Later he would bundle the design file up with the note, attach his version of the house plans, and send the whole thing to the design office.

It was now very early in the morning, and he had not yet gone to bed. His eye were too tired to continue his visual "walk-through" of the house on his computer screen. He felt a yawn welling up. Maybe he was getting truly sleepy. He closed his eyes and stretched his arms and back.

A sharp "boing" sounded directly in front of him.

His eyes snapped open.

An icon was flashing in the upper left-hand corner of the monitor.

_E-mail. No big deal._

So why was he shaking?

He was still unnerved by the apparition - that grostesquely comic, disturbingly savage murder he had witnessed just a few hours ago.

_Hold it now. _Simulation _of a murder. Let's keep our realities straight, OK?_

Even so, the animated performance had irrationally frightened him. The music and images had haunted him as he toured this perfectly safe, innocuous, virtual interior. As he stared at the blinking E-mail icon, a bright red cartoon bloodstain flashed across his brain. He tried unsuccessfully to erase it.

_And just who would be leaving an E-mail at this time of night? Or should I say morning?_

He double-clicked the icon and the message appeared.

CASSSSSSSIE!

AM LOOKING FORWARD SO MUCH TO SEEING YOU TOMORROW! WE _ARE_ ON FOR NOON, AREN'T WE? AT THE COURT OF KING LOUIS XIV? OH PLEEZZZ DON'T CANCEL! IT'S BEEN WAY TOO LONG.

GABE

Castiel breathed more relaxedly.

_Gabriel_

Gabriel was even more of an insomniac than Castiel, and nocturnal messages between them were no oddity. But part of the message puzzled him.

_Court of King Louis XIV?_

Then he remembered. The lounge. The hotel where he'd be for the next few days.

_Gabriel's fantasizing again. Guess it's my serve._

He went to his desk accesory list again to leave a message of his own

HELLO GABRIEL!

WE'RE STILL GOING. AND I UNDERSTAND WE'RE IN FOR A TREAT. OLD KING LOUIE'S HOLDING A COMMAND PERFORMANCE OF A BRAND NEW MOLIERE PLAY WITH MUSIC BY LULLY AND LYRICS BY NEIL SIMON. SHOULD GO DOWN GREAT WITH WHISKEY AND MARGARITA. SEE YOU THERE!

-CN

He zapped the message into the network, then shut down his design program.

_Surely I'm tired enough to go to sleep now. _

But as he looked at his hand resting on the computer mouse, he noticed that it was still trembling.

**:::::::::**

The horizontal hold went out on Dean's eyesight. The omelet he was trying to eat kept flipping upward through his vision. He just wanted to close his eyes and let his head drop on his plate. This commonly happedned after he'd been awakened for work in the wee hours. Particularly when dawn was just coming up, as it was now.

But Dean knew he'd get a second wind in a little while. He'd be good for another twenty-four hours straight if he paced himself right. The prospect wasn't particularly pleasing.

Dean took a huge swig of coffee and stared ruthlessly at the omelet until he managed to make it stand still. Then he looked across the cafe table at his partner. Victor was munching on a stack of pancakes.

"Not off to the best starts, are we?" Dean observed.

"Nope. Reporters showing up before cop is not what you'd call a P.R coup. The captain'll really give us hell for that."

"Why can't he blame the Hollywood cops? They got there before we did."

"Since when is Colt fair?"

"Good point."

"So a millionaire from Chicago gets whacked in one of our finest wannabe-luxury hotels," Victor mused, shaking his head. "Kind of obliges us to solve the case, huh?"

"Kind of."

"So how soon do you think we'll get a laugh on this one?"

"The same as usual," Dean said. "Soon or never."

"Never's a long time."

"A hell of a long time."

Dean and Victor frequently likened themselves to a stand-up comedy team playing to an unsmiling audience. A "laugh" was any hint or clue indicating that a case might be solvable. If they didn't get one early on, things would only get tougher - if not downright impossible.

The ideal time to get a laugh was before the two of them even came onto a homicide scene - during those first few minutes after patrol officers arrived. But this time, the warm-up act had been a real dud.

Dean shuddered as he sipped on his coffee. A high profile case like this could dog their heels almost endlessly.

"Never" was, indeed, a long time.

He grabbed a jar of horseradish and began to spread the sweltering stuff all over the omelet - his usual antidote to disagreeable crime-scene odors. If worst-case situations - when a corpse was, say, a week or two old - horseradish was the only way to clear up his sinuses.

Dean and Victor began to talk over their strategy for the rest of the morning - including the hotel guests they needed to interview, and the subpoena they'd have to get in order to obtain the hotel's records on those guests.

"I got a hunch it'll all prove a waste of time, though," Victor remarked.

"Why?" Dean asked.

"Just a feeling. I don't think it was done by a guest."

"Who was it, then?

"Come on, Dean. If I knew that, we could wrap up and head home early. It _could_ have been somebody from outside, that's all. I got a look at the fire stairs. The perp could've just slipped in, done the deed, and let himself out."

"But did the killer hang around the hallway and wait for this particular guy, or was it random? And are we ruling out a mob hit? Dick Roman wasn't said to be the sweetest guy in the world. His demise might have been subsidized by some gerous Chicago philanthropist."

"Awfully messy for a professional job."

"Well, it sort of fits in with the pervasive decline in Amican craft and workmanship, doesn't it?"

"It was personal, Dean."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Dean said, remembering the man's gaping wound and the savagely rendered blood stain. "How long's it been since we saw someone cut up like that?"

"I sure can't remember."

Dean was seized by another wave of tiredness. He involuntarily close his eyes. His own words echoed through his mind . . .

_"How long's it been since we saw someone cut up like tha?"_

Her face crept into his mind. Her face with that odd, glazed look.

_Come on, man, forget about it. It's been three years. How much more time do you want?_

Dean tightened his eyes.

_Don't see it. Keep it out of your brain._

Her face with that expression. What was it about that expression?

His first thought had been that she'd gotten her makeup all wrong. And, yes, that expression. He'd laughed at the expression whenever she'd gotten it before. It was a screwed-up-goofy look of some dippy thirties movie comedienne, a bemused look she got when some asshole called with a wrong number or when she came home from the store with some body else grocery bag or when she'd bob out of a swimming pool like a wet cat after an unexpected dunking. It was the look that had made all her friends cheer and clap and hoot and holler when she popped in the door on the evening of her twentieth birthday and got the surprise of her life. It was a look that had made sweet mockery of her pretty young face.

Dean's eyes popped open. The bright light of the cafe dissolved her image. It had been a long time since his last such attack, and he'd forgotten how simple it was to get rid of the pictures.

_Just remember to open your eyes when you don't want to see something._

The brightness resolved into a glittering clarity - the half-eaten omelet, the empty coffee cup, the Formica tabletop. Dean raised his head and looked into Victor's light brown face with its slender but distinctly African features. Victor was staring at him.

"You OK, Dean? Thought I'd lost you for a moment there."

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Don't bullshit me, fella. I'm your partner. It's my business to know when you're not fine."

Dean sighed. "Doesn't this job ever get to you?" he finally asked.

"No."

"Never?"

"Huh-uh."

"Does it ever get to you that it doesn't get to you?"

"All the fucking time. I worry like crazy that I'm turning into a ghoul or a soulless zombie or an insensitive husband or daddy or some such thing. All cops do, 'specially in homicide. You know that. It's just a fact of life." Victor paused a moment, then added, "But all cops aren't you. We haven't been through what you've been through."

Dean nodded. That pretty well cut to the problem. Victor hadn't become Dean's partner until a few months after the thing had happened, and Dean had never told him the whole grisly story. But Victor knew enough to figure it would still nag at Dean from time to time.

"If it's getting to you, maybe you should take some vacation time," Victor suggested.

"Naw, then I'd really get all strung out. I'll be OK, Vic. I'm just tired. And when I'm tired, I started getting pictures in my head. After a while they always go away."

The two of them ate in silence. Then Dean said, "I used to like my job. Now I don't have any idea whether I like it or not. I'm like an air traffic controller who's trying to do his job after he's been _in _a plane crash. Maybe I really ought to look for another line of work."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something that won't push my buttom like this job." Dean fell silent again for another second or two and then added, "Maybe I'll become a mortician."

He and Victor both laughed.

"Not until you get yourself cloned," Victor said, "If I lose you, my next partner's sure to be some right-wing redneck skinhead white supremacist."

"You'd be an experience for him." Dean grinned. When Victor just scowled, he said, "And right, damn it. I'll stick it out for a while. Just for you. Now let's finish eating ang get moving. We've got a real mess on our hands.

**:::::::::**

**TBC**


	4. 00011

**DISCLAIMER: **I own nothing of it.

**::::::::::**

**INSOMNIMANIA**

**00011**

**OLICE LINE**

**DO MOT CRO**

**::::::::::**

THE NEXT DAY AROUND NOON, Dean again stood in the Quenton Park's sixth-floor elevator alcove staring at the blood on the wall. Ava Wilson, the hotel manager, had railed at him for making her staff wait a day and a half before cleaning up the murder scene. A _kid. _Dean remembered the young woman's brash, spoiled demeanor. _Can't be more than twenty five. Getting paid five times my salary. I'll bet, just to hire and fire Latinos and feed receipts into a computer._

The manager had become more pleasant when she learned that none of the hotel guests or employees had so far been implicated in the murder. And she had turned absolutely charming when Dean told her to go ahead with the cleanup.

Now the gold screen that had been hiding the stained wall and floor had been removed. The police-barrier tape was piled on the floor. Three hotel employees stood discussing what could be done about the bloodstains.

"The one on the wall's a cinch. We'll scrub as much of it off as possible, then give her a good coat of paint. But that blot on the carpet's the problem." Ed said pointing to the wall.

"Guess we'll have to replace the whole square of carpeting for this corridor." Harry sighed.

"Yeah, but no. Not today," Ed repeated. "That Ava Wilson, she want this hall fixed up quick."

"So?"

"Grab one of those little rugs from one of the empty rooms. We'll toss it over the stain for now."

The two dispersed. Dean still stood in the corridor, staring at the bloodstain as though it could be decoded, as if it might reveal . . . what?

_Probably not a hell of a lot._

Garth, the forensics investigator, had already been by to perform his spatter-analysis magic. By measuring the exact size and dimensions of the blotch, the distance between isolated droplets and how they were smeared, Garth had drawn his Sherlock Holmensian conclusions about the exact positions of the attacker and the victim when the fatal wound was delivered. Garth had even come up with a fair idea of the attacker's height, build, and strength.

_About my size._

And - oh, yes - although the autopsy wasn't too far along, it seemed pretty conclusive that the killer had used an extremely keen blade - probably some kind of stainless steel, serrated kitchen knife.

_The wonder of forensics. A lot of good it does. _The man was dead, after all. That was final, unchangeable.

Several hotel guests came and went, gawking and shuddering and sometimes making sick jokes. Dean looked at the raised wall pattern critically. He didn't have to be an expert on decor to know that the interior of the Quenton Parks was load of crap.

_How typical of Hollywood's bullshit "comeback" - trying to make a new hotel look old! _

Two of the men in white corells returned with buckets, brushes, paint rollers, and rags. Dean sighed as he watched them set to work. It was kind of sad to wipe out a thing like that with a few sweeps of a paint roller. There sure was a lot of mystery in that stain. Dean sort of like the way it shattered the corridor's pretensions.

Dean heard a small gasp at his back. He turned to see a dark-haired man standing behind him. He was tall, about five-foot-ten. His smooth short hair was tousled - like a bed hair. He was dressed in black and blue tie, an expensive-looking three piece suits with matching dark coat. It was the kind of getup that had been carefully put together or bought as an outfit. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was hanging slightly open. He seemed stunned.

"Can I help you, sir?"

The dark-haired man was clearly unaware of his presence.

"Sir?'' Dean said, stepping nearer to him.

He started out of his trance, trembling. He briefly, nervously perused Dean's face. With his large blue eyes and his full lips, he struck Dean as a startling beautiful man - but he thought that was probably the result of a lot of time and effort.

The man turned swiftly and started to walk away.

_Does this one know something? _He stepped in front of him, pulling out his badge.

"Sir, my name is Dean Winchester, L.A.P.D. Are you aware that this is a crime scene?"

The man stopped, but he looked as though he actually might try to dash past him and run.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"Well, it's just that you seemed awfully interested in that wall there.

"Not really," he said, not turning to look at it.

Dean tried to go _easy. Don't spook him. _"Sir, I don't mind telling you that we're having a hell of a time with this investigation. It was a particularly nasty crime, and in a public place like this - well, clues are pretty tough to come by. If you can tell me anything - anything at all . . . "

He looked at him. "It's just -" he stammered. "It's just that I've seen something like that."

Dean pressed forward. "What's your name, sir?"

"Castiel. Castiel Novak." He shrank away from him again.

"Are you staying here? Nice place. Not your usual homicide scene, if you know what I mean." He was trying to put the guy at ease, but he seemed to grow colder and more distant by the second. He wondered if he still had garlic on his breath from lunch.

"Yes, I'm staying here," the dark-haired man said. "Down the hall. I'm here on business."

"What did you mean when you said you've seen something like that?" as Dean, gesturing toward the wall.

The man started to reply, then closed his mouth. Dean reached out as if to touch his arm, to encourage him - a mistake, he realized too late. He drew back from him again and was quite composed now. This time he turned and faced the splattered wall.

"Oh, it's the design. I believe it's Louis XIV. I saw something like it at Versailles, I'm sure. I'm an architect as well as an interior designer, so I notice these things. It's shocking to see it . . . stained like that."

The elevator doors opened. "Excuse me," the man said. "but I'm late for an appointment."

Dean nodded. He walked away from him.

_Can't exactly haul the guy in for knowing too much about wall decor._

With a straight back and a dignified step, Castiel disappeared into the elevator. Dean took out his small notebook and wrote down his name.

**::::::::::**

Castiel Novak fled deep into the velvet lined elevator, slipping into a space behind several people. He watched the open doorway warily, but the detective did not follow him. The handful of people faced front in doll-like silence as the doors slid shut. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the elevator wall. The sun design with it dark blotch kept exploding in his mind like the afterimage of a flashbulb.

That morning, when Castiel had follow the porter out of the elevator on his way to his room, he had laughed when he spied the ornamented wall. He knew that the emblem of the Sun King was copied from His Majesty's very bedroom doors. Even then, another significance to that design had teased at his thought, but his attention was quickly deflected by the small demands of finding his room and settlilng in.

He had seen only one of the garlanded suns that morning, however. The other wall had been blocked with the screen. _Something gold._ _Yes, three gold panel with a crane and a bonsai tree._ One of the elevators had been out of service. And yellow tape bearing the warning POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS was stretched diagonally across a portion of the corridor, preventing access to the screen or the elevator. Castiel hadn't found the tape particularly ominous - just a reminder that he was back in L.A.

But just now, the Japanese screen had been moved aside and a long strand of the yellow plastic tape lay tangled on the floor. Fragment of the message surfaced here and there among its coils . . .

_. . . OLICE LI . . . ROSS POLI . . . INE DO NOT CRO . . . OSS POLICE LI . . . _

And now that police detective was standing there in the hallway. He had been staring directly at the stain - a stain that Castiel had not seen that morning. The larger splatter was placed across the garlands and the rays of the sun, the smaller splashes bloomed like terrible flowers on the face of the sun, and the line of a drip followed a curved edge.

_That stain was exactly like . . ._

But no. He wouldn't complete that thought. He couldn't. The implications of that precise stain on that precise design were intolerable.

Castiel struggled to bring his thoughts under control. The elevator stopped at another floor, and two more people got on. At each stop, everybody on the elevator shuffled slightly backward. The elevator stopped at another floor, and two more people got on. The rhythmic sliding of the doors, the familiar rituals of the people - their polite distances, their quiet apologies to one another, their contractions of boundaries to accommodate those whose presence they would not again acknowledge - these small protocols eased Catiel's alarm. He couldn't believe he had so nearly panicked right in front of that detective.

_What did I think he was going to do, arrest me?_

By the time he got off the elevator and found his way to the bar, Castiel was feeling steady again. Like the rest of the hotel, the King Louis Lounge was posh - althought here the florid French motif gave way to a darker and more heavily upholstered elegance. Behind a well-polished wooder bar, an array of bottles glittered. Only a few people occupied chairs around the scattered tables. The room was shadowy, and Castiel couldn't tell immediately whether the friend he planned to meet had arrived or not.

Then, in a burst of color and motion, a man with slick blond-colored hair scrambled out of a booth and charged forwad, holding out his arms and calling Castiel's name. Gabriel's warm, chestnut-colored eyes momentarily startled Castiel. No one else he knew had eyes like that.

Surprised by a rush of emotion, Castiel realized how much he'd missed his friend. He threw his arms around Gabriel, who returned the embrace warmly. Castiel stepped back and saw Gabriel, was laughing.

"I can't believe it's been year," Gabriel said.

"I can't either." Castiel said.

Then came a moment of pleasant confusion during which neither of them had the slightest idea what to say next.

"Love your outfit," Castiel said at last, although he was sure Gabriel's tie and slacks hadn't started life as ensemble.

"Don't be sarcastic," replied Gabriel pertly.

"Let's just say you have got a knack for making me look stodgy."

"You've made it so easy," commented Gabriel with a little smirk.

Castiel caught a sepia-tinted glimpse of the two of them in the mirror behind the bar. His own dark reflection was practically visible next to the blond and purple one. Images came back to him, of the two of them in faded jeans and men's shirts, piplub sandals, baseball caps and dirty sneakers.

In those days, they'd been on more equal terms. Of course, they'd both gone through transformations during the past several years. But Castiel could see that Gabriel still maintained an air of exuberance, while his own look was now more premeditated.

_My own _life_ is more premeditated._

**::::::::::**

**TBC**


End file.
